Hiring an MBA not profitable

NEW DELHI: Hiring an MBA may not be as profitable as one would think. This has come out in a survey conducted by Ken Coogan & Partners-based on the data given by VNUs AC Nielson.

The survey states, under-performing companies were twice as likely to have had recruited out of the MBA pool than the out-performing companies.

The survey which was conducted in companies like Kraft Foods, Nestle, Pfizer, Clorox Co., Reckitt Benckiser, Energizer, Cadbury Schweppes, Kodak etc, revealed that though the MBA factor was not the sole factor for under- performance, it was perhaps the most striking one between winners and losers.

About 90 percent management executives (MEs) from under-performing companies had MBAs while only 55 percent MEs from out-performing companies had the degree. The useless MBA factor was heightened by the find that about 10 percent of the MEs in the out-performers had masters degrees other than MBA while the MEs from under-performers had none.

The out-performers were also understaffed when compared to their under-performing peers. While out-performers spent higher on marketing at 12.4 percent of sales compared to the under-performers 11.6 percent, they also got higher sales per ME.

While out-performers had one marketing executive for every $37.9 million in sales, under performers had one ME for each $28.5 million in sales.